


Time and Salt Water

by Sour_Idealist



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Anachronic Order, Background Relationships, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Future Fic, POV Alternating, Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-07 23:24:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13445619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/pseuds/Sour_Idealist
Summary: In 9:47 Dragon, Admiral Isabela returns to Kirkwall for the first time in ten years. It's not easy to come back to a place where she has so much history; it's even harder to come back to the people there.Merrill, meanwhile, wasn't pining after Isabela from the time they met until the destruction of the Gallows. She had other things to be doing most of the time! And anyway, that was all so long ago -- wasn't it?





	1. Prologue: Isabela - 9:30 Dragon

**Author's Note:**

> First off: the rough draft of this story is finished, so it is very unlikely to be abandoned! My current plan is to post it weekly and edit as I go. It will be told in alternating chapters, with Merrill narrating the past and Isabela the present, with the prologue as an exception.
> 
> Background or mentioned relationships include a brief Aveline/Isabela fling, Aveline/Donnic, Fenris/F!Hawke, F!Adaar/Josephine, and speculated/implied Varric/Cassandra. Other content notes include canon-typical violence (offhanded, and most present in the prologue); a whole lot of drinking; plentiful sex (eventually); and the general events of canon, including mentions of canonical-(to-some-worldstates) character death (Anders, Merrill's tribe.)

Isabela first came to Kirkwall limping, bleeding, and barely thirty. “I am,” she said under her breath, gazing up at the unforgiving walls, “getting too old for this.”

The survivors of her crew left her at the gates. “Sorry, Isabela,” Donovan said. He was Casavir's replacement as first mate, and he had never called her by her name before. He flinched back from her thinning lips, but there was nothing she could say about it. She wasn’t his captain anymore. “You know how it is.”

She knew. No one wanted to sail with a captain they’d seen sink. It was bad luck, even if it hadn't wrecked their faith in her. And besides, they could find new berths far faster than she could expect to find a ship.

Thus: she was alone in Lowtown. Her travels had never brought her to Kirkwall before; she didn’t even have a favorite bar, let alone a contact or a friend or a good place to stay the night. And most of her coin was buried in the silt of the Waking Sea. She had not quite ten silver, and if she got desperate she could sell her jewelry, naked as she’d feel without it —

And then two shadows came looming out of the alley, which was just what the evening needed, really.

“Hey there, missy,” one of them drawled. He was built like a brick wall next to his partner’s skinny silence. Maker, did they not know how two-bit they were? “Now, there’s no need to make a fuss.” The skinny one was circling to Isabela’s back. “All we want from you is your pretty jewelry and your purse, now, and is that so bad?”

“Hmmm…” Isabela shifted. She’d lost some knives in the struggle ashore, but that was why she wore so many. “Is it so bad to give up my things?” There, in the top of her boot. “I would have to say… _yes.”_ The knife landed in Skinny’s chest with a meaty thunk, and he let out the usual gargle and collapsed.

“What — I — you — I —” the big one babbled, drawing an axe the size of Isabela’s head.

“Yes,” Isabela said, somersaulting closer, “I did.” One of her biggest knives stuck in its salt-soaked sheath sheath; she growled, grabbed another one, and shanked him in the kidney. He collapsed with another agonized yell, and Isabela slit his throat for tidiness's sake. She cocked an ear; no answering yells, no pounding feet. They had no allies, then, and Kirkwall’s Lowtown folk had the sense to avoid random fighting in the night.

“Rank amateurs,” Isabela grumbled, going through her assailants’ pockets. “Oh, and two silver and a handful of copper? Pathetic.” She kicked the skinnier corpse and glanced around, her hands on her hips. “Well,” she said to the city of strangers. “Remind me to get out of _this_ shithole as fast as I can and not come back.”


	2. Merrill - 9:31 Dragon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Discussion of queer erasure.

“Isabela?” Merrill asked. Her mouth was thick with the taste of the Hanged Man’s beer. She’d never drunk beer before, only the Dalish liquors. The lightness of it was tricky; it didn’t burn to warn you off, and it was served in such massive tankards that she had no idea how much was enough. She might have had too much. Her tongue felt thick and clumsy, but that happened to her a lot.

“What is it, kitten?” Isabela asked. Merrill was staring at her shoulder, where the thick shining tangles of her hair fell over the bright shining gold of her necklace and sent shadows over the thin warm skin under her jaw. Merrill wanted to press her fingers there and feel Isabela’s pulse; she wanted to press her mouth there and taste Isabela’s sweat. She wanted to coil her hands in Isabela’s hair and pull her tunic down, slipping it off her shoulders until Isabela stood in just the necklace. She wanted — she wanted —

“Is your necklace real gold?” she asked.

“Oh, Maker, no! I’d have been killed for it long before now,” Isabela said, laughing. Her eyes crinkled when she laughed; Merrill wanted to trace the creases like lines of wood grain. She was too warm, but a lot of Kirkwall was too warm for her; the aravels were cooler, and less crowded, and also, the beer wasn’t nearly as warming as the spirits but Merrill was definitely drunk. Probably. Fairly sure. Her feet weren’t steady.

“It’s just plate,” Isabela said, reaching up to the clasp on her necklace. “A little bit of shininess over the real thing — you plate lead if you think you might want to pass it off as real, or any old thing if you don’t, but I actually have it over steel. It makes it useful, you see. Like a gorget. Gold wouldn’t stop a knife, but this will.” With a flick of her fingers the necklace fell from her throat, revealing a tiny mole an inch above her collarbone and a deep hollow at the base of her throat. She held the necklace out to Merrill; her tunic slid low on her breasts. She had freckles there, a half-shade darker than her skin. It was Isabela; the freckles might be all over her.

“Go on, kitten,” Isabela said. “Have a look.” She waved the necklace.

“Oh!” Merrill took it, fingers fumbling. “Oh, it’s so heavy!”

“Not as bad as it would be if it were real,” Isabela said. “That’s the other problem — can you imagine wearing that kind of weight around your neck all day? If I wanted that, I’d be married again.” She paused. “That made more sense in my head. It’s a bit of a stretch.”

“Marriage sounds very boring,” Merrill said, running her fingers over the skin-warm gold. Plated gold. “Um. Isabela, you sleep with women, right?”

“That I do, kitten,” Isabela said. She leaned back on her stool, bracing her elbows against the bar, and crossed her legs over the knee. It made her look like nothing in the world could ever give her trouble, and it made Merrill's tongue stick to her mouth. Isabela smirked. “Are you asking for any particular reason?”

“How do you _know_?” Merrill asked, a little desperately. “About other women, I mean.”

Isabela blinked, straightening up. “What?”

“How do you know if they do too? Is there a signal? No, that’s silly, of course there isn’t a signal, but — I mean, surely you know, don’t you? You find out somehow before you ask?”

“If she’s staring at my breasts, it’s usually a hint,” Isabela said dryly, reaching for her drink. “And I usually I don’t know first, kitten. I just ask — something like, ‘hello, would you like to buy me a drink?’ Or, sometimes, ‘hello! Your tits are even better than mine.’ That’s usually pretty obvious.”

“What if they don’t like women at all?” Merrill asked. “What happens then?”

“Then she says no and we move on,” Isabela said, shrugging. “Sometimes they’re polite about it, sometimes I get a drink thrown in my face. Worse things have happened. How do you do it in the Dalish?”

“That’s just it,” Merrill said miserably. “I don’t know.”

“Oh?” Isabela raised her eyebrows.

“There’s a lot of rules,” Merrill protested. “For sex, I mean. And Marethari explained them, when I started growing breasts — you know, as much as I ever grew breasts — about how children are precious, and you mustn’t have any until you know you can take care of them, which is why you should be very careful if you’re not bonded to anyone. And Firsts have to be _very_ careful, because we have so many other responsibilities, and people mustn’t think you’re favoring one part of the clan over another just because you wanted a few minutes of fun under the trees. That’s how she said it,” she added, picking at her tunic. “You’re more than just yourself, as a First. And she told me the spells, you know, to stop yourself from having children if you don’t want them, or make it easier to have them, and to purge disease — but she said she expected me to be sensible and not have to use that on myself. I was never very good at them anyway. I’m not much of a healer.” She sighed, propping her elbows on the bar. “But all the rules are about _men —_ well, about children, really, but a woman can’t get me with child.”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that, actually,” Isabela said. “There’s women with bodies like men, you know, cocks and all that. But they dress as women, live that way, think of themselves as women — you know, everything.” She grinned in reminiscence. “Kiss like women too, in my experience.”

“Oh.” Merrill frowned. “I didn’t know. But still, the rules weren’t written for this!” It felt very important, somehow; she stabbed indignantly in Isabela’s general direction. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to know what to _do._ Maybe we just don’t, in the Dalish, and we all just wander around looking at each other and wishing and never doing anything because we don’t know how to ask. Except I don’t think so, because usually people manage to understand each other, and I never can. Especially when it’s dirty.” She sighed heavily, dropping her face into her folded arms. “So I just don’t know.”

“Oh, kitten,” Isabela said. Her fingers settled in Merrill’s hair. Merrill went perfectly, entirely still. “The world is full of fools, and even the kindest people in it sometimes forget that not everyone is like them. I’m sure there’s women sleeping with each other among the Dalish; they do it everywhere else I’ve ever been. It’s not your fault your Keeper never told you.”

“Mmm.” Merrill closed her eyes, pushing her head against Isabela’s hand. “Oh, can you do that some more, please? It’s lovely.”

“You really are like a cat,” Isabela said, laughing, but her fingers moved behind Merrill’s ear, careful of the sensitive point. “Anyway. I can’t tell you anything about the Dalish, but as long as you’re in Kirkwall, all you have to do is ask. See what they say.”

“I don’t know if they’ll —”

“I can’t hear what you’re saying, kitten,” Isabela interrupted. “Although if you’ve always thought your sleeves made excellent listeners, don’t let me interrupt.”

“Oh.” Merrill lifted her head a little again. “I don’t even know if I’d be exiled, if I slept with a shemlen women. One who couldn’t get me pregnant, anyway. It’s not allowed with a man, but maybe if there wouldn’t be any children…” She sighed; her breath blew back in her face, heavy with beer. “It doesn’t matter, I suppose. It’s not as if I could go back anyway.”

“Oh, kitten.” Isabela’s hand dropped from Merrill’s shoulder to her back, rubbing circles in between her shoulderblades. Merrill could have melted into the touch, could have lain there for hours against the bar and let Isabela stroke her. Maybe Isabela’s hand would have drifted further down to the small of Merrill’s back, down to cup her buttocks —

“Isabela?” Merrill asked, lifting her head. “Would you like to sleep with me? Please?”

Isabela’s hand went still on her back. Merrill wilted.

“Oh, well,” Isabela said. “You’ve got to be careful about sleeping with friends, kitten. Especially if you want to stay friends in the morning. Just imagine how dreadful it would be to explain to Hawke why we aren’t speaking.”

“Oh.” Merrill sank back into her folded arms.

“You’re a pretty girl, Merrill,” Isabela said, smoothing back her hair. “I’m sure you’ll find plenty of people, women and men, who want to spend time with you. Horizontal time. Or vertical — you’re pretty light.” Merill didn’t laugh. Isabela sighed, pulling her hand back to her side. “I’ll buy you an hour at the Blooming Rose sometime, if you just need to try out a few things.”

“It’s all right,” Merrill said dismally. “I can buy one on my own, probably — at least if Hawke kills anyone rich this week…”

“You’d make a good pirate,” Isabela said, and waved to the bartender for another drink. And that was the last she said about it; their conversation turned to other things, and Merrill kept drinking that night and woke up with a terrible hangover.


	3. Isabela - 9:47 Dragon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isabela returns to Kirkwall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I'll post every Monday!" I say, and immediately get sick. Ah well.

“Isabela! Isabela!” Merrill’s voice cut across the bustle of the Kirkwall docks. She had streaks of gray in her hair already, but she waved as eagerly as she ever did back in the Kirkwall days. Make that the old Kirkwall days.

“Hello, kitten,” Isabela said, hugging her friend hard enough to lift her off the ground. Merrill wasn’t so whisper-thin as she was when Isabela hugged her last. Her clothes were worn but mended well — which was interesting, considering that Merrill could no more sew than she could fly — and although some of the even-spaced scars on her wrists were new, they weren’t clustered close and desperate, and only one of them looked fresh. “You look good!”

“Oh, so do you!” Merrill says, squeezing her tight. She pulled back, smiling. “But then, you always do. Varric told us you were in the Inquisition — can you tell us how much he’s lying about it? Aveline and I think he made up half of it, but we’re never sure which half.”

“I can try, but I wasn’t spending time with the Inquisitor,” Isabela said, shrugging, and fell into step beside Merrill as they headed up into the city, winding through the crowds as if they'd never left. “Varric offered to introduce me, but I didn’t want to borrow trouble. And, well, I might… possibly… did Varric mention the Inquisitor’s lady-love was an Antivan merchant matriarch? Well, matriarch-in-training.”

“Do you not _like_ Antivans… oh! Did you sink one of her ships?”

“I don’t usually _sink_ ships,” Isabela said. “Varric just likes to put that in because it’s dramatic. Usually you want to grab everything you can and let them go, or take the ship for your own. The navies chase you more aggressively if you don’t leave survivors, and, you know, in a few years your victims might be trying to pirate _you._ Merchants don’t always stay honest when it’s so easy to change your flags.”

“Oh, I see.” Merrill nodded. “Well, did you grab a lot of things from one of Lady Josephine’s ships then, or take one?”

“I don’t usually check their registration,” Isabela said, laughing. “But I probably will, if I have’t yet. From what Varric said, she’s on pace to own so many ships I couldn’t help but rob one.”

“I see.” Merrill nodded solemnly. “Couldn’t you sell her protection the way the Carta does?”

“ _Merrill!”_ Isabela said, gleefully scandalized. “Where did you learn about such things?”

“Er, Kirkwall?” Merrill said, sounding faintly perplexed that Isabela needed to ask at all. “The Carta came around asking questions as soon as Varric left. I said I could probably protect myself pretty well, and the conversation sort of went around in circles for a while — I didn’t really _mean_ to threaten them, you know — well, anyway, I mentioned Hawke and Varric a few times, and eventually we agreed that I’d help them deal with darkspawn and spiders and things and they wouldn’t bother me about money or try to stab me while I was sleeping.”

“We left Kirkwall and you _joined the carta,_ ” Isabela said, shaking her head.

“Varric says I was more of a contractor,” Merrill said vaguely, tugging Isabela away from what used to be the stairs up to Lowtown. “No, don’t go that way, there’s a bit of a hole. We put up some ladders, and they were meant to be temporary but then more of the hole fell in, so we just keep fixing the ladders, and when Varric got back here he just had them start making a new stair where the ladders were, because it’s shorter anyhow, and we’re trying to make the shape of the city a bit less evil —”

“Oh, of course,” Isabela said, a little dizzied, “can’t have an evil city —”

“Oh, were you not there when we found out about that?” Merrill asked. “It’s only a theory — anyway, I didn’t _really_ join the Carta. Which is good, because I kept hitting my head in their shortcuts.” She tilted her head. “I’ll say this for humans, that isn’t really a problem in their cities.”

“Kept?” Isabela asked. “Are you not doing that anymore, then?”

“Oh, no, not for years,” Merrill said, guiding Isabela easily around a crowd clustered by — was that a new well? “They started causing trouble for other people in the Alienage — more trouble than they usually do, I mean — and they didn’t really like it when I asked them to stop, and it all got a little messy.” She sighed. “It wasn’t very nice. Or very interesting. Just more fighting, and there’s been so _much_ of that.”

An elven woman by the well caught sight of them and waved, smiling. “ _Ghilan_!” she called.

“Oh, hello, Miri!” Merrill waved back, keeping her arm tucked through Isabela’s. She moved a little quicker, but she smiled at Miri, and she either meant it or she’d learned to lie. Which she might have, Isabela supposed. The sky had opened up only a few years ago.

“ _Ghilan_?” Isabela asked. “Is that, what, the first mate to the _hahren?_ ”

“Oh, no, no,” Merrill said, tugging them into line for the ladders. Varric’s stairs were still mostly scaffolding, though next to them stood freight lifts that looked already weathered. “No, some of them tried to call me the hahren, but I didn’t let them. I mean, I’m just me.” She gestured vaguely at herself with her free hand. “And then a few of them started calling me _keeper,_ and —” Her mouth quirked down; her grip tightened just a bit on Isabela’s arm. “I didn’t like that, really, and it seemed like they really wanted to call me _something,_ so I suggested _ghilan_. It means, um, guardian, or guide — sort of both, really — I’m babbling.” She shrugged, looking up at the towering ladders, the lines of people waiting.

“Is that what you’ve been doing, then?” Isabela asked. “Protecting the alienage?”

“Mostly.” Merrill shrugged. “I had to leave for a little while — Varric gave my name to some people who needed me for all that mess in Tevinter, you know, with the Eluvians? A year ago?”

“Closer to two, kitten,” Isabela cut in. She and every ship she knew had avoided the Tevinter coast that winter — advisable anyway, with the Qunari dreadnoughts thicker in the water than the merchanters, but there had been something bloody and uncanny in Minrathous and Qarinus, and it had been there that the Inquisition’s leaders turned their attention after their order closed. Isabela had had enough sense not to ask questions.

“Two years, then,” Merrill said vaguely. “But it _was_ about Eluvians, so, you know, at least it wasn’t much of a trip to get there. I could just go. And then I came back, and here I am.”

“I think men have been killed for talking about _that mess in Tevinter,_ ” Isabela said, casting an uneasy glance up and down the street.

“Oh, they have,” Merrill said airily. “But mostly people on the other side, and some inconvenient Tevinter people. We don’t have to worry about the — the other side any more, and we’re not in Tevinter, so I’m all right.” She sighed, leaning her head against Isabela’s shoulder. “Do you ever feel like… so many things get _wasted?_ Opportunities, and history, and time, and just — people’s lives, sometimes. By dying, but also by — oh, I don’t know. I always get sad, when I think about it.”

“When you think about waste?” Isabela asked. Merrill’s hair brushed against her collarbone, feathery and soft.

“Well, that too, but the thing with the Eluvians mostly,” Merrill said. “So much got wasted. Anyway, it’s over now.” She lifted her head, shaking it as if to shake the past off.

“Have you had trouble with the templars?” Isabela asked, curious. On top of trouble with the Carta, and getting tangled in all those strange Tevinter stories — she had worried about Merrill, left in Kirkwall on her own, easy prey for hucksters and slavers alike. She should have known better.

“Oh, not really,” Merrill said. “There’s not very many _left,_ you know, after the war. And I don’t think the alienage would let them take me, so I’m very glad they haven’t tried.”

“I was never sure how many people knew about you,” Isabela admitted. “I mean, everyone knew about Hawke eventually, but you and Anders got a bit… lost in the smoke, sometimes.”

“Oh, well, it all sort of came out during the invasion,” Merrill said. “The blood magic too. There were a _lot_ of soldiers trying to burn the place, and Aveline had tried to send us guards but there just weren’t enough, and all the militia was off in Hightown, and — well, I thought, if they stone me for it afterwards at least then we won’t _all_ be dead. So I sort of. Well.” She sighed, sketching something in the air that might have been fire or an interesting mushroom. “People were frightened of me afterward, but they didn’t try to get any templars and they didn’t stop accepting my help, and nobody died running away from me, so it was all right.”

“Do you still think about that?” Isabela asked, frowning. It had been years since she remembered that stupid boy under the jaws of the varterral, but then, she hadn’t known him.

“Sometimes. But then I think a lot. Even Varric says so, and he spends more time thinking than anyone I’ve ever met.” Merrill waved them forward. “Look, the ladder’s free. Do you want to go first?”

“How do people who care climb these things in skirts?” Isabela wondered, swinging herself onto the rungs. She climbed quickly, not being the kind of admiral who thought she was above her time in the rigging; Merrill fell a bit behind.

“They kilt them up, I think,” she panted, making her way up to the lip as Isabela dusted off her hands. “We are going to the Hanged Man, right? I’m sure you’ll be staying on your ship, but the beer’s at the Hanged Man’s… not any worse.”

“All this time I’ve been following you and you weren’t sure where we were going?” Isabela asked, helping Merrill off the ladder. Merrill’s hand was callused in hers, with staff-work as well as the use of a pen. Merrill only shrugged.

“Well, you didn’t want to stay on the docks, did you?” she said. “There is air that doesn’t smell of fish, you know. You ought to remember.” She paused. “Maybe we could walk up Sundermount for a bit sometime. Piss isn’t really better than fish.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Isabela said, laughing. “Variety helps.”

“Well, that’s good then,” Merrill said, smiling. The light caught on her hair, bringing out the traces of red that had always been there alongside the new gray. Her face was still unlined – it must be good to be an elf. Isabela considered her crows-feet distinguished, but she knew they were there. And Merrill’s eyes were still the same rich startling gold-green of Orlesian chartreuse.

“You two are blocking the ladder,” someone grumbled; Merrill jumped. Isabela twitched a bit too, come to that.

“Well, the Hanged Man’s still in the same place,” Merrill said, tugging her along. “You haven’t told me anything about what you’ve been up to! Was it very exciting with the Inquisition? Did you steal any particularly excellent boats? Have you run into anyone we know?”

“I don’t usually steal _boats,_ kitten,” Isabela said patiently. “I steal _ships_. _”_ She paused. “Well, there was a particularly nicely painted ship’s boat that I did make off with, because it was in better repair than ours, and purple besides. I gave them our old one, though, and made sure they had enough nails left to fix the hole. I’m not _completely_ heartless.”

“What would they have done without one?” Merrill asked.

“Had to swim things in and out whenever they wanted to resupply,” Isabela said. “It’s a good way to drown.”

“Oh.” Merrill nodded. “Well, then it was very nice of you to leave them a boat.”

“When am I not nice?” Isabela demanded, all mock outrage, and Merrill laughed.

Isabela wasn’t nice. Just last week Isabela had gutted a boy no older than fourteen because he dropped out of the rigging with a sword he didn’t know how to use, and the rope made it hard to judge the parry. She did a lot of smuggling these days: it was more profitable, and less bloody, and she’d only just been getting over Hawke’s infectious heroism when she had to go and sign on with the Inquisition. Re-exposure made the disease stick, it seemed, like the summer fevers of the north, and now killing without some kind of cause always seemed to weigh her down.

“Are you going to be staying in Kirkwall long?” Merrill asked.

“Oh, probably,” Isabela said. “The men are due some leave, and the _Call_ could use some repairs.” And the winter rains would roll in soon, and all sensible ships pull in to port, leaving the stupid and the greedy to fight it out between themselves and the weather. Isabela used to love sailing through storms, the rain pounding against her skin and the wind humming through the rigging, fear firing her blood. But then she’d lost the _Call_ – the first one.

“Good,” Merrill said, squeezing her hand. She smiled up at Isabela, tiny and quiet. “I’ve missed you dreadfully,” she said, soft enough to nearly get lost in the wind, and looked away, dropping her hand back to her side.


	4. Merrill - 9:32 Dragon

The summer solstice had the Hanged Man not only packed, but _festive._ Strange.

The door was propped open all summer, letting the sharp winds of the sea cut through the heat of the summer nights, and saving them all from suffocation while they packed odorously into the room together. Human sweat smelled _different_ than elven sweat did, Merrill found; not worse, it was all fairly nauseating, but she could always tell who she was packed in with. At least tonight most of the sweat was fresh, which wasn’t so bad, elven or human.

And tonight the streets of Lowtown were filled with dancing, and half a dozen different musicians fought to set the music in the streets. Fought metaphorically, a pipist trying to outdo a violinist trying to outdo a singer with a drum, although Merrill had seen someone hit someone else over the head with a trumpet a few hours ago. That scuffle aside, Kirkwall’s usual troublemakers seemed to have taken the Solstice off, although Varric had warned her that the pickpockets would be out in force. The warning hadn’t stopped her from getting her purse stolen hours ago, but she’d only had a few silver in it, and Varric had just put her on his tab, so she was still having a perfectly lovely evening.

Varric had had to spend a few hours up at his brother's house, but he got out a little before midnight, and came back to the Hanged Man demanding the worst beer in the building. “I’ve been drinking good wine, Daisy,” he said, flinging himself into his usual chair. “Bad things happen to a man who drinks good wine. He gets pretentious, and then he can’t get drunk anymore without spending half a sovereign. It’s a terrible fate.”

“Aveline says you’re just trying to prove a point to your brother,” Merrill said, and Varric sighed expansively, stretching his arms behind his head.

“Aveline likes to ruin people’s fun by being right at them,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. It’s the Solstice!”

Anders was in the square down the street; Merrill had last seen him dancing a jig with a woman who had one arm bound up in a sling. Half his patients clustered around, waiting their turns on his arm. He looked like someone entirely different, flushed deep where he was so often pale, and laughing like he never did when Merrill was around. Merrill had waved hopefully, and he had even waved back between songs, so maybe they might get to be friends someday after all!

Hawke and Carver had been having a fight of some kind, somewhere in the street by Gamlen’s house; Merrill hadn’t been able to hear a word of it over the noise, but she hadn’t seen Carver since, and Hawke was in the street by Lady Elegant’s stall, talking with that very angry tattooed man they had helped with the slave-catchers a few weeks back. They didn’t look like they wanted to be interrupted, and also, Merrill was drunk and the street looked more than usually full of things she didn’t want to step in.

Merrill was pretty good at knowing if she was drunk by now! She’d almost gotten used to the beer, and she’d gotten very used to the warning signs. She had come to the door to breathe in the breeze and try to cool off a little bit, maybe start to feel a little _less_ drunk; she’d gotten distracted looking around at all the people streaming past.

“Get out of the door!” someone barked at her, shoving past.

“Oh, sorry!” Merrill stumbled back into the crush of the bar, ducking around people as best she could. Varric had started up a card game, because what else did Varric do with his time; he’d probably buy her a stake if she wanted, since he’d be getting it all back anyway, but Merrill felt a little too drunk to try and keep track of the cards. She was all right at remembering which cards won by now; you could put together a story about them, and then it wasn’t that different from remembering the People’s names for constellations or the different tribes’ variants on vallaslin patterns. It was the part where you had to guess what _other_ people had that tripped her up.

Aveline might have been stuck with duty tonight; some of the guards were, and she’d said something about not having a family to spend the solstice with. (“Aveline, I’m hurt!” Hawke had said, pouting, and Aveline had smacked her upside the head. Merrill had thought Hawke might actually have meant it, that time, but Aveline hadn’t seemed to think so, and Merrill wasn’t always good at these things.)

Isabela was probably out with the dancers, astonishing people — she always moved so gracefully that she had to know how to dance, and she would be beautiful in the torchlight, moving to the shrilling fiddles as her hair swung in the candlelight. Maybe Merrill would put up with the street after all, and go and look for her; maybe Merrill could just find somewhere to sit for a while and settle her head, and then go look. People were clustered around the base of the stairs, but not up them in the back halls; perhaps there’d be somewhere quiet in the back —

Merrill saw Aveline first, in the shadows behind a tattered festival banner that was already drooping away from the wall. She wasn’t in her guardsman’s armor, just plain leather, and her hair was a tangled mess. Her hand was stuffed into her mouth, biting down hard, and she was bright red, her eyes screwed shut — Merrill realized what had to be happening just as she came around the corner and saw Isabela on her knees.

Well, it wasn’t like Merrill could see her _face._ But it was Isabela’s glorious curling hair, her usual headscarf lost somewhere in the dark; it was Isabela’s boots, and Isabela’s tunic hiked up around her waist; Isabela’s shoulders under Aveline’s straining thigh, and Isabela's hand between her legs and her arm moving as she ate Aveline out against the wall.

For a moment they were the most beautiful thing that Merrill had ever seen, and she flushed hot right to her core, want pooling heavy and wet between her thighs. And then all the warmth flared into humiliation as she remembered: _I don’t sleep with friends, kitten,_ and Isabela’s hand falling away from her back.

Merrill fled back into the taproom, her eyes burning, and burrowed into a spot by the bar. Someone handed her another beer, and she drank deep, hoping it would distract her from the thought of Isabela’s hair sticking to Aveline’s sweat-shining thigh.

Varric found her eventually. She’d had another beer, by then, and and neither of them had helped at all.

“You’ve been running up my tab, Daisy,” he said, easing onto the stool next to her. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Merrill said, and immediately humiliated herself by sniffling. “Oh, _fenedhis_.”

“Awfully upset over nothing,” Varric said, and waved to the bartender over her shoulder. “Come on, Dasiy, it’s me. Tell me what’s wrong. I can at least make it a good story, and things are easier when they’re a good story.”

Merrill cleared her throat. Her cheeks had gotten damp, at some point; she dragged her hands over her eyes. The bar had quieted down a little; people were making their way to the street outside, or simply getting too drunk to keep talking. “Did you know Isabela and Aveline are — are — um?”

“ _Aveline,_ really?” Varric asked, raising his eyebrows. “You know what, actually, it makes sense. I’d be surprised if it’s a regular thing, though — did one of them say something?”

“No,” Merrill said. “No, I, um. I wasn’t peeping! I mean, they were just — it was in the hallway — I mean, I suppose I kept looking, but it was only for a moment, and — oh, I’m _babbling,_ why do I always do this!”

“Sh, sh, Daisy,” Varric said, grabbing her hand. His was big and warm, and callused; he squeezed her fingers gently. “You’re pretty drunk, all right? Everyone babbles when they’re drunk. It’s a fine tradition.”

She sniffed. “Really?”

“Of course. Come on, you’ve heard the people in here.”

“I do it all the time, though,” she said, rummaging in her pocket. She’d tried to carry a handkerchief last week, but she'd lost it at some point; she made do by wiping her eyes on her scarf.

“Yeah, but for now you have an excuse. You’ve got to learn to take advantage of these things, Daisy. For right now, you get to babble without guilt.”

“Thank you, Varric.” She smiled a little.

“So.” He sat back, settling her hand on the bar between them. He drummed his fingers against her knuckles. “Our guard-captain getting entertained in the hallway. A very happy Solstice to her, too.”

“They were sort of behind a banner,” Merrill offered. “Well. Not very well behind. I don’t think either of them noticed me, they were… sort of busy.”

“These things happen,” Varric said. “I’ve seen more than I’d like of too many people. Comes of living in a bar. So what’s got you so upset?”

“She told me she doesn’t sleep with friends,” Merrill said miserably.

“She — ah.” Varric shook his head, swiping what was left of Merrill’s beer. “She told you that, did she.”

“Yes.” Merrill sighed, rubbing at her head. It had started to ache at some point. “She’s friends with Aveline, isn’t she? At least as much as she is with me. So either she likes Aveline enough to change her mind, or she just doesn’t want me and didn’t want to say — do you think it’s because of, you know, the blood magic?” Varric opened his mouth, but she continued, “Or it could be that I’m one of the People, you know, Marethari warned me that some humans wouldn’t like that I was Dalish and some people would _only_ like that I was Dalish — she told me a lot of things before I left, in between telling me I didn’t have to go — anyway, I can’t think Isabela would be like that. I mean, I can’t imagine her crossing off so many people, and she’s never been cruel that way, so I really think it must be the blood magic —”

“Hey, hey, Daisy,” Varric cut in. “Hold up a minute, okay? I promise, Isabela doesn’t hate you for being Dalish, or for being a blood mage, or anything else. Come on, have you ever thought she’s subtle?”

“I didn’t think she _hated_ me,” Merrill said. “If she’d hated me she wouldn’t have lied to me about why she said no.”

“Oh.” Varric sighed, rubbing at the back of his head. “Shit. You’re heartsick.”

“Am I?” Merrill thought about it. “Oh. A little.”

“I wouldn’t take it personally,” Varric said, patting her hand again. “I know it’s not always that easy. But she and Aveline… they’re a very different kind of friends than you and her are. You’ve seen them sniping at each other. If they snipe a little more, well, it’ll all fade back to normal. But she likes you, plain and simple.”

“She likes me, so she doesn’t want me?” Merrill wrinkled her nose. "That doesn't make any sense at all."

“It’s like that some times. Our Isabela doesn’t like to get too attached to her bed-partners. Have you noticed?”

“How could I?” Merrill shook her head, shoving her hair back. “No, now I’m just feeling sorry for myself. I’m sorry.”

“Look at it this way,” Varric advised. “She’d rather be friends with you than sleep with you. There’s a compliment in there, even if it might not be what you want right now.”

“Maybe.” Merrill sighed. “Do you really think that’s all of it?”

“Mmm.” He sighed. “She might be worried about hurting you, too. Aveline’s been through a lot, and she’s been married once before. And like I said, she and Isabela aren’t likely to start some grand romance, or want to.”

“Lots of things hurt,” Merrill said, flexing her hand, feeling the scars pull across her palm. She’d switched to her arms, now; it was easier to fight when she could use her hands after the magic. “It doesn’t mean they’re not worth doing.” She shook her head, sighing. “I’m being silly. It’s not as if I don’t have enough to do.”

“That’s the spirit,” Varric said, but he didn’t quite meet her eyes when he said it.


	5. Isabela - 9:47 Dragon

 Merrill’s house looked nothing like Isabela remembered it.

It was better-lit, for one thing; somehow Merrill had come into enough money to afford all she needed for candles. There was a circle of mismatched chairs, enough to hold half a dozen people; she had actual dishes piled in the sink, enough for several meals, and none of them looked to be days old. Little Merrill had _guests,_ these days. And wasn’t little, not really, even less than she had ever been. 

Also, half the walls were covered in murals now. That was really the biggest difference. In one corner lay a palette of paint and a brush.

“You’ve turned into an artist, kitten,” Isabela said, looking around her.

“Oh, thank you.” Merrill smiled absently, looking around. “It’s… something I’m trying to reconstruct. Much less dangerous than the eluvian!” she added quickly. “They aren’t magical at all. They’re just a… tradition, of sorts. It’s not one the Dalish can keep alive very well; you sort of have to stay still.” She tapped her fingers against the wall, against an image of — it was the alienage, Isabela realized, or at least, that was Kirkwall’s vhenadahl behind the row of stylized elves with makeshift weapons raised to the sky. The figure at the end of the row wore vague-sketched vallaslin and carried a staff; Isabela smiled, tapping the self-portrait's face.

"This is you, isn't it?"

"It is!" Merrill said, beaming. “The art's been… almost completely lost, but I found some of it in — well, during the Eluvians thing.” She sighed. “You’re right, it is sort of hard to talk about all that.”

 

“No need, then,” Isabela said, flinging herself into one of the chairs. She straddled it backwards, bracing her hands on the top of the back, and rested her chin on the back of her hands. “I’m not devastatingly curious or anything.”

Merrill shrugged, brushing her fingers against the wall. “I may try to paint some of it. I’m not very good yet. I bought a slate to practice, but I still have to try the same picture again and again before it’s good enough to go on the wall. The ones in the bedroom aren’t very good at all; that’s where I started.” She sighed. “Anyway, the short version — of the Eluvians thing, not the the murals — is that I met someone who was just — _ugh!_ He makes me so _angry._ He knew so much, and he could have _taught_ us so much, and instead he — some of this I think I really am not supposed to tell you about.” She grimaced. “But he was trying to do something stupid and horrible, because he thought the only way to fix a mistake was to undo it, and — well.” She shook her head furiously, hair flying in wisps. “It was all just such an awful waste. I almost understood him, was the worst part. But I was never _that_ stupid.”

“You were never stupid at all, kitten,” Isabela interrupted, frowning; Merrill only sighed.

“I was, in a way,” she said. “Not for the reasons everyone thought I was. I still haven’t been eaten by spirits, or lost my mind and started using other people’s blood instead of mine. But… you can’t try and save people without thinking about whether they want to be saved that way. Otherwise it’s just a mess.” She sighed.

“Are you still thinking about your clan?” Isabela asked softly. "It wasn't your fault, kitten."

“I'll probably always think about them,” Merrill said, crossing over to the hearth. “Here, let's not talk about it. I’ll make some tea. Do you drink tea now?” She brandished the kettle. “I never had it before, but it’s cheaper now.”

“Then someone’s got some roundabout smuggling going on,” Isabela said, impressed. “It must be overland at least part of the way, since you still can’t get anything through around Seheron — you probably don’t want to hear about the shipping patterns.” But it was probably better than talking about the dead Sabrae, and watching Merrill go miserable and still.

“Varric will want to know!” Merrill said brightly, rattling mugs. “He’s paying attention to all of that. Apparently he can do all kinds of things with taxes, and maybe some of the smuggling — not the lyrium smugging, obviously, but the other things — might stop _being_ smuggling, and then apparently Kirkwall gets money anyway, somehow. I don’t really understand any of it, but you should tell him.”

“If it’s being sold in his city, he probably already knows,” Isabela said. She grinned. “Maker, _Varric’s_ city! It’s been years and I’m still not used to it. He might be legally obligated to arrest me.”

“Oh, you’ve been pardoned,” Merrill said brightly, getting down a box of what Isabela assumed was the tea. “Only in his jurisdiction, obviously, but if you don’t steal any ships registered out of Kirkwall — or their things, I suppose — and don’t do any plundering in Kirkwall’s waters, you’ll be safe here. You can probably get the harbormaster to give you a list of registered vessels, if you like, to make sure you maintain the terms. And he said something about a letter of marque?”

“I _what?”_

“Oh, Varric’s been taking care of all of us,” Merrill said. She frowned at the kettle, which sloshed heavily, and flicked her fingers at it. Steam began boiling out of it immediately, and she started to pour. “Fenris’s house is actually _his_ house now apparently, legally and everything, and it got fixed up a bit while they were rebuilding Hightown. So of course Fenris doesn’t want it and is selling it, but that’s because he’s admitted he’s living at Hawke’s house, so it all works out in the end. I’ve got some sort of official status as a mage, in case the templars come to me — it even gives me permission to use blood magic as long as it’s my blood, but he says he isn’t sure he could make that stick if the Chantry really made a fuss, so there’s a lot of complicated language so he can pretend he’s giving me permission for something else and I’m not a blood mage — _esoteric disciplines and theoretical research,_ I think, I’d have to look at it again — it made Bran _really_ angry. Varric thinks it broke him a little bit, actually; he hasn’t fought anything else as much.” She frowned, staring off into the distance; Isabela reached out to steady the kettle and realized Merrill had already tilted it back. Once she would have kept pouring, lost in thought, until hot water spilled all over the counter. “Where was I? Oh, the pardon!”

“Varric went and made me _respectable?_ ” Isabela demanded, and then: “And since when do you talk about jurisdictions, anyway? You never used to pay attention to laws.”

“Well, I need to know them now, for the alienage,” Merrill said absently, putting the kettle back. “Aveline helped me for a while, but I do all right now, and we have a sort of fund if anyone needs a real solicitor. It’s not as easy as the lore was, because, you know, that was all stories, but I manage. Sometimes you have to get the words exactly right, but that’s not that different from magic, really.”

“Sweet Maker, you’ve been busy.”

“Oh, well, I try.” Merrill shrugged it all off with one shoulder, handing Isabela her tea. “Do you think you’ll sail out of Kirkwall now, then? I mean, if you can stand to be respectable?”

Isabela almost choked on her tea.

That in itself surprised her; it was the obvious question. A letter of marque was serious business; it would lose her some friends in the raiders, but she’d make up for that in official sanction. Well, semi-official semi-sanction. She’d even have a cause of sorts, even if it was only Kirkwall’s financial glory. _Admiral Isabela of the Second Call, privateer of Kirkwall, scourge of the_ — well, not of the Free Marches, since Kirkwall and Starkhaven were officially at peace again, but she’d be free to grab what she could from the Qunari and Tevinter. And she might have to drop back down to a captaincy, at least for a little while. _Scourge of the seas, legally this time._ And yet she was suddenly cold, though Merrill’s house was well-patched and her fire well-fed. Merrill had built a life here, solid and binding as stone.

“I don’t know, kitten,” she said, slowly setting the tea down. “You know me — I’ve never liked to be tied down. There’s so much world out there! It would be a shame to spend it all in Kirkwall, of all places.”

“Oh,” Merrill said, and stood, turning away. “I forgot the honey pot,” she explained, opening another cabinet. “Well, that’s fair, I suppose. Kirkwall isn’t very cheerful. It’s just — we all miss you, you know.” She shrugged, plunking the honey onto the table. “Well, it’s not really my business, I suppose. As long as you’re happy!” She dropped into the chair next to Isabela, pulling her chair close. Their knees brushed under the table, and Merrill caught her eye and smiled and moved herself another inch away.

They’d shared the night three times, back when. What an odd thing to for Isabela to remember now. 


End file.
